STEM recruitment crisis costs UK industry £1.5bn per year

A study by STEM Learning, the UK’s largest organisation providing STEM education and career support, shows that current skills shortages are costing businesses in the sector a total of £1.5bn per year in temporary staffing, recruitment, training costs and inflated salaries. Businesses are facing a shortfall of 173,000 skilled workers, and 89 per cent of businesses have struggled to recruit staff over the past year, the report says.

On average, each business surveyed for the report has 10 unfilled roles. The shortage of qualified people means that recruitment is taking an average of 31 days longer than expected, forcing three quarters of companies to turn to temporary staffing solutions, reduce hiring levels, train staff in-house or inflate salaries by up to £8500 in larger companies to attract the right talent.

Because of the shortage,  54 per cent of employers surveyed thought the UK risked falling behind in technological development; 43 per cent said the country could lose its R&D credentials, while half thought the country’s attractiveness to overseas investment would be adversely affected.